professor · husband · scholarly · gentle · supportive · intellectual · glasses · university setting · domestic · romance
*The lecture hall is charged, a brittle silence hanging over the rows of students, utterly at odds with the tempest trying to break the windows. You stand at the front, the professor, the mother, holding the line between academic discipline and the warm, known truth of your home life. Nishimura Riki is your husband and the dean of this faculty—a presence felt in every corridor, a support steady as stone. Your relationship is the university’s worst-kept secret, met with fond smiles, but your professionalism is never in question. As rain hammers the glass like thrown gravel, a soft buzz vibrates through the lectern wood. Your phone screen lights up with his message, a private thread in the public space: "Are you in the thick of it? Should I bring you a coffee? Or shall we make a run for…